Freedom // Current

Will the Internet soon be Regulated beyond recognition?

"The ACTA juggernaut continues to roll ahead, despite public indignation about an... more

claybird121
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Ceara’s Season - Girl Banned for Wearing a Tux

Wesson, MISS - "...Last month, she got word from her Wesson Attendance Center... more

jcamille
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Freedom Day: Milano per il Muro a Celebrazione Finita

dia_offman
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U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three... more

MotherForTruth
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100 Great Moments in American History You Can Catch on YouTube

Watch the history of the United States unfold, from its birth, to its music, to its... more

sunnyspeaks
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2 days ago
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An Overview of Human Rights in North Korea

To most of the world it appears that the apparent devotion of North Korean citizens to... more

TROTSNEWS
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3 days ago
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RFL

time for liberty

gooma2
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9 months ago
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11/14/2009 Libertarian Mike Shanklin Attends Neocon Rally Raleigh, NC

11/14/2009 Mike Shanklin Reports From The Anti-Healthcare, Freedomworks Rally in... more

shanklinmike
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4 days ago
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5 comments

Senate Bill would allow "mentally Incapacitated" vets to buy guns

Major Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood Army base, has been... more

Vierotchka
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5 days ago
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99 comments

10 Yr Old Wants Rights For Gays & Lesbians or He Won't Pledge Alliegance to the Flag

Is it me or are kids a lot more well spoken these day?

Jenime
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5 days ago
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55 comments

Did Obama smuggle a little democracy into China?

I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he wrapped up his prepared remarks, stepped away from the podium, and began to explain the format of the town hall portion I realized that this might be absolutely foreign to many of these students. Here is a country's President, a very famous and powerful man, asking them to raise their hands and ask him a question. Whatever they asked him, he'd answer. We obviously take this sort of thing for granted - heck our most recent town halls seem to have devolved into purely shouting at our elected officials. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Obama, who was not joined on stage by any major Chinese official, had smuggled a little democracy into the PRC.

[Video is featured. This video of his introducing the concept is from CNN and their anchor, predictably, talks all over him, but you can hear the second half. If anyone can find a clean video - I'll replace this one with it.]

He also, and this was the headlining remark, asserted the American position that it's okay for everyone to use Twitter.

"President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China on Monday to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism...."I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."

If the President's goal was to sneak a little democracy into the People's Republic, it seems to have not reached too many citizens. The event was not broadcast nationally - only on local Shanghai stations - and the live feed from the White House web site was reportedly choppy and hard to watch in China.

FROM THE BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/16/did-obama-smuggle-a-little-democracy-into-china/

SOURCES: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-holds-town-hall-chinese-students-introduces-us/story?id=9091246&page=2
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_bi_ge/obama
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/15/live-blogging-obamas-shanghai-town-hall/I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he... more

afitzgerald
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5 days ago
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Ralph Nader "There Are Hundreds Of Thousands Of People In Jail That Shouldn't Be There!"

I'm not holding my breath for a billionaire to save me. Corporatism is the problem... more

Jenime
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6 days ago
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Stop to Rototom Sunsplash Festival

It has been the biggest reggae festival in Europe, but now the Rototom Sunsplash will... more

bibabiba
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6 days ago
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Private Police Cause Concern in Britain

The growing number of private security companies policing UK streets is a worrying... more

rodstradamus
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7 days ago
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Is Marijuana Prohibition America’s ‘Berlin Wall’?

[Editor's Note: This essay was originally published on March 1st, 2009. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's deconstruction and the fall of Communism being recognized around the world this week, and with the ever-falling support for cannabis prohibition in America, this essay from NORML board member George Rohrbacher seems even more apropos today than last March.]

It is said that almost everyone in the marijuana law reform movement has a seminal moment they can point to when their public activism started. My moment was in the fall, six years ago.

I’m a past president of our local Kiwanis Club. I’ve been a member for years; we meet for breakfast at 6:30am, every Wednesday morning. My fateful “activism moment” was meeting face-to-face with one morning’s Kiwanis Club program, our town’s newly acquired dope dog. Some rock-ribbed citizen had left money in his will for the city to buy a dope dog for our town of 3,000, in a county of 18,000 people. The dog’s handler and the police chief were up at the speaker’s table. I had to fight back the urge to turn around and run.

As I sat down at my usual spot, ordered breakfast and clipped on my Kiwanis Club nametag, my heart was just racing! Thank God, my neck pain had not been severe enough that morning that it had required some marijuana medication, because, I imagined, triggered by the smell of freshly consumed ganja, that huge German Shepard would have leaped from the podium to pin me down to the floor, the dog’s sharp white teeth snarling and snapping at my throat.

As we went through club business about our kid’s reading program, ate breakfast and conducted the normal chit-chat that makes Kiwanis Club so enjoyable, I slowly calmed myself. I had not been found out as a marijuana user, yet. There was no need for me to panic, because the likelihood that I would be found out now by this agent of the state, was growing smaller and smaller by the moment. But, as the primal fear drained away, it started to piss me off; this dope dog was invading my space.

The dog handler got up and spoke glowingly about his charge, the alpha male of his litter. This dog had been born of a long and impressive pedigree in Baden-something, formerly East Germany. Looking at me from across the room was the pride of the jack-booted police state, the purebred German Shepard—smart, vicious, relentless.

The dog handler went chirping on, to mostly nodding heads, about what a fantastic dog he had and how many pot busts he had already made with it. Suddenly, all I could think was: This dog was born in East Germany, it’s father could have pulled someone down off the Berlin Wall…this dog’s great-grandfather would have marched the Jews or Gypsies to the ovens at Buchenwald or Auschwitz… And now, my own little town had a new resident from the same police dog gene pool that serviced the two most brutal totalitarian regimes in the history of the mankind!

Scenes from my childhood of when German Shepards attacked the Civil Rights marchers at Selma floated before my eyes… This well-groomed dog was a tool of the modern police state in all its scariest manifestations. The more I thought about it, the madder and madder I got.

I paid my breakfast bill and left in the first wave. I drove back out to the ranch and fed our cows their daily ration of hay, all the while mulling over my close brush with the dope dog. By the time I got done with my chores and back to the house, I absolutely had to do something! I picked up my telephone and called NORML, and I volunteered for the fight that very day…our fight for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”

Marijuana prohibition is a corrupt and evil social institution, just like the Berlin Wall was. For generations both have been symbols of the ruthless and relentless oppression of the state.., by the sheer weight of internal political http://blog.norml.org/2009/11/11/is-marijuana-prohibition-america%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98berlin-wall%e2%80%99/[Editor's Note: This essay was originally published on March 1st, 2009. In celebration... more